Almost a dozen environmental groups have called a demonstration on Saturday May 20 in the south of Tenerife to demand a “change of model” tourism in the archipelago.
The march will leave from the parking lot of the Metropolis in Playa de Las Américas to the Plaza Pescadora in Los Cristianos and, unlike other occasions, it will go to the south of the island because it is the “origin” of the “hypertouristified” spaces.
Through a statement sent by ATAN, the conveners point out that this generates a “direct repercussion and awareness of the situation of the islands” to tourists who are in the place and may “get the attention” of businessmen and politicians.
Along these lines, they point out that when it is called in the middle of the electoral campaign, they trust that it will “pressure” the parties that are presenting themselves to position themselves on issues that currently “do not even have in their electoral programs or that, if they do, it is in a way that is directly opposed to current needs”.
The groups insist that the Canarian society “has already made its own” demands such as the tourist moratorium, the eco-tax or the need to have well-protected natural spaces, but it is necessary to put on the table “real and applicable debates on healthy and economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, following the path started in hyper-touristized regions that have begun to achieve changes”.
“In our territory there is no room for more luxury homes, more hotels, more roads, more private vehicles, more vacation homes, more tourists or more digital nomads,” they point out.
In this sense, they claim a “fair decrease” in some islands with a population at risk of poverty that is around 40%, for which they understand that “continuing to grow is absolute nonsense and does not benefit the local population.”
They give as an example “the problem of water” represented by the golf courses, the “aguatenientes” and also “the banana monoculture or the macro-tourist complexes and hotels”, and not the resident population that is the one that “suffers” the cuts of supply as is happening in Fuerteventura.
Limit digital nomads and land purchase
They also propose setting “limits” to digital nomads, prohibiting the purchase of land or housing to speculate, companies and people who settle on the islands for their tax advantages “which are nothing more than tax evasion” or companies that “come to buy or build housing to convert them into de facto hotels”.
The protesters affect the “loss of quality of life” of residents in the Canary Islands due to traffic “jams”, “the increasingly frequent calimas”, the loss of biodiversity, the “deterioration” of natural spaces or the “great difficulty” to access housing.
For all these reasons, they want to propose a “change of model” that includes, among other issues, a tourist and vacation moratorium, an ecotax, the recovery of degraded spaces, the effective conservation of natural spaces, that no more roads are built or the development of renewable energies.
